The Land of Milk and Honey

After several months in the desert, Moses sends twelve spies, one from each tribe, into Canaan, the land God had promised to them when they left Egypt.

Numbers 13-20-24

After forty days of scouting out the land, they returned home.

26-27They presented themselves before Moses and Aaron and the whole congregation of the People of Israel in the Wilderness of Paran at Kadesh. They reported to the whole congregation and showed them the fruit of the land. Then they told the story of their trip:

27-29“We went to the land to which you sent us and, oh! It does flow with milk and honey! Just look at this fruit! The only thing is that the people who live there are fierce, their cities are huge and well fortified. Worse yet, we saw descendants of the giant Anak. Amalekites are spread out in the Negev; Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites hold the hill country; and the Canaanites are established on the Mediterranean Sea and along the Jordan.”

30Caleb interrupted, called for silence before Moses and said, “Let’s go up and take the land—now. We can do it.”

31-33But the others said, “We can’t attack those people; they’re way stronger than we are.” They spread scary rumors among the People of Israel. They said, “We scouted out the land from one end to the other—it’s a land that swallows people whole. Everybody we saw was huge. Why, we even saw the Nephilim giants (the Anak giants come from the Nephilim). Alongside them we felt like grasshoppers. And they looked down on us as if we were grasshoppers.”

Response: What did the spies report? What does that report show us about how the people felt about God’s promise to them?

They reported what was on the land. They felt discouraged because Moses said that they could take the land but the people were frightened because they thought they could never defeat the people there because there were more of them and they were bigger than them.